Mastering Bump Maps for Curious Labs Poser® and Corel Bryce® Part 6 (the final part) [Return to Part 5] Now you perhaps want to keep the ribbing detail but want to smooth your folds somewhat. Without smoothing the folds will tend to look blocky and unnatural, especially if you use them in Bryce, but with smoothing the improvement can be quite dramatic.                       1. In order to do this, the ribbing detail needs to be masked out before you can soften the folds. Use the Freehand Brush Mask with the anti-aliasing switched on to create a soft edged mask. Brush in the areas you want to mask. I find the following settings to be the best.       2. You can Add and Subtract from the mask by pressing and holding in the Crtl and Shift keys while you use the Freehand Brush Mask. Always select the Additive or Subtractive mode setting because if you select the Normal mode it will wipe out all your previous strokes with every new stroke that you lay down. Keep the Mask Overlay button switched on to see where your mask is. It is a lot more accurate than the normal "marching ants" mask. Here are the various Mask modes available:         There we are! Almost finished! Is your mask starting to look like this? 3. Now the final step is to Invert the Mask so that the ribbing is now covered by the pink Mask Overlay colour. Don't forget to save your image! In order to get the slopes between the peaks and the valleys of the folds smooth a slight Gaussian Blur is needed. 1. Go to the Effects...Blur...Gaussian Blur menu item and change the Blur Amount to 1 or 2 pixels. Select OK and check the results. It might be wise to go to the Objects Docker and switch the Grid object off and set the view magnification to 100%, before applying the Gaussian Blur to check the results.                           You can always undo (Ctrl-Z) the Gaussian Blur if you cannot get the effect you want. (Note that the area that is masked is protected from the effects of the Gaussian Blur.) (Tip: You can remove the mask and move in with your Pointed Smear tool to clean up any odd defects in the bump map.) 2.Save the file and then remove the grid object and save the file again as a Windows BMP file. Now load it into Poser (or Bryce) again to see how it looks.       Here is a simple test render with the Poser figure with its default texture and with a clothing texture that I wanted to use on it. Doesn't look like much, does it?         Above is the Poser figure in Bryce with its default texture on the left and with the basic clothing and hair texture on the right. Rather bland and boring, isn't. Now let us give it some life. Add the bump map as another texture channel in Bryce and give it a 15% "strength" setting                     Finally the Poser figure comes to life and his clothing, albeit a bodysuit, takes on the appearance of real clothing and not "painted on". A high amount of detail is possible as you can see when you zoom into the face. (Looks a bit like George Clooney!) If you feel really adventurous you can experiment with the facial area and the hands as I have done with this picture. This can be a real challenge, but with carefully created wrinkle lines you can give your character real life. (Try masking off the beard area and try a faint spraypaint of a slightly lighter tone than the skin mid-gray to create some stubble. Eyebrows and eye lashes can also be rendered. I find that a single pixel airbrush on a black foundation can give the impression of the hair of the eyebrows.) Hair is another area that can be bump mapped. It is rarely suitable for full bodied flowing hair, but ideal for close-cropped or short hair. Again reference will show you how hair flows from the crown. Experiment with everything. Try different brushes and blurring. Increase the detail by boosting the contrast or the gamma on a bump map. With a lot of practice and experimentation you will be able to get some really spectacular results. This tutorial has not covered how you work with UV maps in Bryce nor working with Bryce's Materials Editor. I don't intend to repeat the efforts of those experts. There are already some fine tutorials available of you want to learn more. There is: Steve Cox's own UVMapper Tutorial Peter Sharpe's "Importing Poser 3 textures" Spike has a PDF file on how to import Poser 4 figures into Bryce 4 Bernd Jaeger has a Bryce Texture Tutorial Some tutorial sources I can personally recommend are: The Information Cave's Poser Tutorial links page. Pete's Place is a good source for Bryce Tutorials. (he is busy with a redesign - so  beware!) The Internet Eye has a large Tutorial section too. Lannie's new site at 3D Model World is packed with links. I have come to my final point, and that is that this tutorial is not carved in stone. I am sure there are mistakes, and places where improvements can be made. , and I will certainly try to improve it. Happy Bumpin'!
	This concludes the tutorial. Need a "printer-friendly" version? There is also an Adobe PDF version available. [5.30Mb] Many thanks to for all her hard work in creating it. [Return to the beginning] [Return to "Worlds in the Making...]"